


Intangible

by 1ngenium



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 06:12:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17861858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1ngenium/pseuds/1ngenium
Summary: The "Dirk is Jake's imaginary friend that's just a little bit too real" AU no one asked for. Based on a tumblr post I saw a billion years ago





	Intangible

Your name is Jake English, and you are running as fast as you can.

Really, all you can hear is the slapping of your feet on the pavement, the thudthudthudding of your heart, and the rattle of your lungs trying to pull in some oxygen, hold it for more than a single moment.

Really, all that surrounds you are the moss-covered walls, cars that haven’t moved in years, and the muted tones of graffiti long since abandoned by any that would maintain or remove it.

Really, there is no one with you.

The boy beside you laughs, and with a voice like liquid sunlight he says, “Hey now, what kind of way is that to think about your best bro?” You slow down to take a breath or two, and Dirk skids to a stop beside you. You throw a glance behind you, searching for your pursuers. 

Moments before, you had been standing outside your school awaiting the arrival of the bus, and someone caught you talking to Dirk. Yes, you can talk to him in your head (he does live there, after all, it’d be a bit odd if he couldn’t hear almost everything that came through there), but talking to him out loud has always made him feel more real to you. People have caught you talking to him before, sure, but usually you could brush it off as humming along to a song you’d heard, or just working your way through an exceptionally difficult math problem (which was true sometimes; Dirk is way better at math than you, which leaves you endlessly confused, how can a figment of your imagination know more than you?), but you couldn’t brush it off this time. 

To put it plainly, you had been trying to see how high you could get Dirk’s eyebrows to go by theorizing about your teachers’ sex lives, and you managed to say something quite embarrassing right as everyone else at the bus stop decided to stop talking. A few moments filled with hasty excuses and fists attempting to connect with your face later and you hightailed it out of there, Dirk by your side and several quite unsavory slurs tossed aggressively after you.

“Think we lost ‘em?” You gasp, feeling like you’ve run a marathon, which you suppose you might have. You can never remember how long you’ve been running. Dirk nods, and you let your guard down as you gulp down huge amounts of air. Dirk grins down at your doubled over form, and you glare at him. Asshole goddamn Strider with his asshole goddamn ghost bod that doesn’t need asshole goddamn oxygen. 

Dirk bursts out laughing at 'asshole goddamn ghost bod,’ and after a moment you can’t help but join in.

\----------

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are not real.

You know you’re not real, you really do, but it seems that every single day you have to remind yourself, and it’s no coincidence the reminders always become more necessary when Jake’s hair glows golden in the sunset, or when his eyes glitter and sparkle like the sun reflecting off a pool in the woods, or when he smiles at you like you’re made of every star in the cosmos (his smile makes you feel like he’s right).

You tell yourself over and over again that there’s nothing that would ever happen, could ever happen, between you and Jake, because you know that’s not how things work, that’s never the way things go, real boys don’t fall in love with their best friends, and certainly not their imaginary ones. Every day you catch yourself on the edge of a thought, catch yourself looking at his arms and nearly wondering what they’d feel like wrapped around you, catch yourself almost wanting to reach out and brush a snowflake off of his cheek. You always catch yourself, always, because you have no idea what would happen if you didn’t. You aren’t even sure how you’re here in the first place, how you can even think for yourself, and if you did something stupid that made Jake upset at you, who knows what he might do? Oh, he’d never hurt you, not on purpose, but he holds your entire existence in the palm of his hand, and you would rather not take any chances with that.

You still remember the first day you saw him, your birthday. Maybe birthday isn’t the best word to describe it, since you weren’t exactly born, but you love the word. It makes you feel more human. That day, the day you first laid eyes on Jake, was the best day of your life. You didn’t know anything at that point, nothing except that you were Dirk and he was Jake, and though you had never met him before, he was such a sight for sore eyes. You didn’t know that you could miss someone you had never met, nor that you could know someone from the very first seconds of your life and still feel like you were waiting for an eternity before that to meet him. 

You smile fondly, remembering his mile-wide smile as you sat up for the first time, remembering the way his hands shook and shook as if they were made of the thinnest paper being tossed about in a hurricane, remembering the way his eyes were the size of the moon that hung above you. He was so excited to see you, so excited to look into your eyes and see you look back. You could see every thought as it went through his mind, hear his excitement leaking out of that pretty little head of his, hear the corny old sayings dashing back and forth between his ears (GADZOOKS). You spent so long just sitting there, listening to his thoughts, listening to him reassuring you and talking to you and telling you just how nice it was to meet you. Maybe you cried then, maybe you didn’t, you don’t really remember, and even if you did you would deny it to anyone who brought it up (which really, the only one who knew you were there was Jake, so what would it matter?), you weren’t really paying attention to what was or was not leaking out of your eyes, instead choosing to spend your time being a total cliche and getting lost in his.


End file.
